Objects at Hand is the result of an ongoing collaboration between Dirty Electronics (John Richards) and T M Shaw.   Just before lockdown in 2020 Richards and Shaw finished a tour, Points of Failure, which involved building performance-installations in various venues across the UK. These environments, made up of DIY devices and found objects, were constructed in response to the performance spaces, and consisted of sound, light, smell, smoke and other sonic processes.    Objects at Hand was recorded retrospectively in remote locations and then edited and mixed as a memory trace and document of the sounds, physical spaces and objects encountered on the tour.   Action, uncontrollable instruments, unstable systems, performative failures, reimagined affordance of objects, playing with resource, improvising inside electronics, assembling and disassembling sound devices, architectural features are folded into this performance document.   Richards and Shaw see their work as a form of ‘cybernetic wayfaring’, improvising with materials, feedback and new situations, as they continue, and repeat.  --- 1. Praxis [4:34] - coil, circuits, feedback, motors, metal sink, tin can, transducer 2. Imposed_Adjacent [4:35]- rubbing motor, interjections, radical nails, tin can, voice, large glass vessel 3. Opus 25 [3:48] - sparkler, filtered noise/whistle, hacked speak n’ spell, vowels, tin can, Tesla coil 4. Thinking in Time [5:35] - boat, creeky platform, gated noise, thrupenny synth, spring reverb feedback 5. Temporary Needs [7:18] - disposable cameras, large capacitor discharge, circuits, AM radio, prepared speakers, spark gaps 6. newCorpus [1:59] - travel, flights, hotel, coil, Dictaphone, large speech corpus, pd patch (disorderly jukebox --- Opal Tapes, 2021

"In Another Place is constructed from the sounds of found materials, domestic objects and self-made mechanisms. Working between Lucerne, Montreal and Huddersfield, we followed simple cues as instructional starting points, responding to a single word to create a sonic response within a specific time-frame. These prompts became starting points for materially engaged, sonic exploration. Each take was a dislocated, improvisation to no-one, confined to our private studios and homes, our headphones and recorders. Sounds include recordings of ceramic hobs, seaweed, styrofoam, kitchen foil, balloons, resonant tubes, scrap metal, motors, water pumps, spark gaps, lightbulbs, water, wooden dowels and sand paper. The results were layered, re-situated and mixed by matching time-frames and timbre. In Another Place explores the musical potential of everyday materials through disconnection, interpretation and serendipity" - (Tim Shaw) -- "What if COVID-19 had never swept the globe? What if our lives were operating as normal? There would’ve been Anne-F Jacques from Montreal as ame’s fourth artist-in-residence collaborating, in different scales, with a gang of sound artists and musicians; Julia Eckhardt, Phil Niblock, Tim Shaw, Tania Caroline Chen, Yorkshire Sound Women Network and myself right now, here at Dai Hall, a venue for underground experimental music and art scene in Huddersfield. The luxury of chaos (I miss that now) would’ve been followed by high-spirited laugher. When Keiko invited me to make a mini album for Takuroku, I romanticised this hypothesis, the ‘what-if’ theory. Every event has a cause. This Takuroku opportunity has given us a chance to thrive, to get back to our individual creative zone, to listen to the world once more. Thanks to Cafe OTO." - (Ryoko Akama) -- Recorded by Tim Shaw, Anne-F Jacques and Ryoko Akama -- Mastered by Anne-F Jacques Artwork design by Oliver Barrett